SAVE OUR RHINOS!

This is certainly one of the most iconic pictures of Africa and its inhabitants - a rhino, etched against the sky with the last rays of the day still lingering, head held high and with its horn prominently on display. 

Tomorrow (Saturday 22 September) is International Rhino Day and EcoTraining has been right in the middle of the fight in trying to save these magnificent beasts from disappearing from the natural landscape. We have added a Rhino Conservation and Research course to our program as we believe education is vital to informing not only discerning nature lovers, but all and sundry that has a respect for all inhabitants of this planet. 

The picture, as described in the intro to this story, is however fast fading into oblivion. A hundred rhinos have been killed in the last two months alone and the figure for 2012 has already crossed the 380+ mark. If the current rate of unabated killing continues, close on 600 rhinoceros would meet their end with the bullet from a poacher's weapon by the time 2012 closes out. This would be up from 448 last year and 333 the year before.

And all this for a horn that is made up of keratin, melanin and calcium and similar to horses' hooves, turtle beaks and cockatoo bills. But to change deep-rooted Eastern and Asian believes that it is a cure for cancer, a remedy against a host of other illnesses and an aphrodisiac, is going to take a lifetime. Put on top of that the international fetching price of anywhere between $40 000 to $65 000 per kilogram for this precious commodity, it almost seems like an insurmountable task. Even more so if museums across the globe are now also having to remove their rhinos from public view after a spate of thefts. There have been 57 thefts and 12 attempted thefts of rhino horn from museums in 15 countries in Europe since the start of 2011.

That is why the tireless efforts of private land and rhino owners, rangers, conservation organisations, the police and military, and the general public is of vital importance to save the species. They are taking up the plight of the rhino to ensure that future generations will still have the opportunity to see these grey beasts as part of the natural landscape.

To ensure the survival of their precious stock, the owners of the Selati Game Reserve in Limpopo, where EcoTraining has one of its wilderness camps, undertook a massive project earlier in the year to send a clear message to potential poachers, "Keep your hands of your rhinos!" A group of one year professional field guide students were on hand to witness first hand and got a taste of conservation at work.

The management of the reserve, in cooperation with the proper veterinary assistance, started dehorning some of Selati's rhino population (black and white). Great care was taken during the whole operation and all the necessary measures were put in place. The animals were handled with the utmost care as a rhino's horn is not fixed to the skull, but almost an extension of the skin.

It is believed that the dehorning, in addition to strengthening the anti-poaching patrols on the ground and from the air as well as various other safeguards, will greatly reduce the temptation to those with weapons and a savage agenda. The re-growth will also be monitored and cut regularly to ensure that the horn mass remains very low.

There may be questions and arguments from some corners about the effectiveness of dehorning as a deterrent to poachers, on how and if it affects the social behavior of the animals and the reaction of tourists upon seeing an 'altered' animal in the wild. Nothing overtly negative or detrimental has yet been recorded on each mooted point though.

The bottom line is, the time for talking is long gone and it is only the dedicated action of concerned conservationists, like the landowners of Selati, that will give South Africa's rhinos a fighting chance.

For more information and dates on the Rhino Conservation and Research course, visit www.ecotraining.co.za or send an email to enquiries@ecotraining.co.za.  

Wildlife Photography - Photo Workshop

The workshop started off with the safe arrival of participants at Galago Camp in the northern Sabi Sands Game Reserve.   After settling in and a light lunch, we started off with a run-down on how the workshop would work followed by a discussion on the cameras and the various settings required to get the best wildlife photographs.

 With that sorted out we set off on our first game drive hoping to get some interesting subjects and little did we know how interesting it would become!

We hadn’t even left the area of the camp when I heard the single alarm bark of a baboon above the noise of the engine and immediately switched off to listen.  We heard the alarm bark again, but in the background we could hear very loud and urgent alarm snorts of a large herd of impala!  We raced across an open clearing and got to the impala herd which was staring fixedly in the direction of the woodland on the edge of the clearing.  We drove along the edge of the clearing expecting to see the leopard walking away from the impala through the woodland but saw nothing.  The impala kept staring into the same place and we repeatedly searched the area only to realise after the third try that the impala were actually looking into the long grass in the open no more than 10 metres from them.  We drove carefully in that direction and discovered an adult female leopard with a freshly-killed impala ram well-hidden in the grass.

We got ourselves into position to get as clear a view as possible and began to take photographs.  Five minutes later a single spotted hyaena came zig-zagging across the clearing and on picking up the smell of the kill, without any hesitation, simply ran in and grabbed the impala as the leopard scampered away.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon observing and photographing as the hyaena consumed the kill and the leopard lay patiently watching and waiting to pick up any scraps left behind has the hyaena dragged the kill away. 

Eventually, with its stomach bulging, the hyaena decided to stash the kill under a bush and wondered off and this gave the leopard a chance to get it back!  Surprisingly, she didn’t make any attempt to hoist the remains of the kill into a tree and simply settled down to eat.  A few minutes later the hyaena returned, chased the leopard up into a tree and ate some more.

We spent the rest of the evening watching as more and more hyaena arrived and the leopard rested in the tree watching her hard-earned meal disappear very quickly.

What an amazing start to the workshop with a lot of action which provided the photographers with great challenges.

That first afternoon set the tone for the rest of the weekend with sightings of another 5 different leopards, including a female leopard with her cub on another impala kill.  One evening was spent getting great flash photographs of the cub resting in a large monkey thorn tree as we learnt how to get correct exposures with flash and to use flash off-camera to cut down on red-eye.

Other highlights of the workshop included a great morning spent with 10 hyaenas in beautiful early morning light as they interacted with one another, early morning coffee next to a small group of hippos where we had the opportunity to get down on the ground and lie on our stomachs next to the water to get dramatic eye-level shots, a group of 5 white rhino who ended up walking so close to our vehicle that we were able to focus on close-up shots of their eyes, ears, horns and oxpeckers on their backs and a group of dwarf mongoose sitting on their termite mound basking in the early morning sun.

The early morning and afternoon activities were interspersed with lectures on various aspects of wildlife photography followed by the downloading of photographs from the previous activities for critique.

Hopefully the photographers left the workshop having learnt a few new things and inspired to go on to even better photography.  One thing’s for sure, we all came home with some magnificent photographs.

LEX HES - April 2012 EcoTraining Photography

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ECOTRAINING PHOTO WORKSHOP

ECOTRAINING PHOTO WORKSHOP

JAYDEES CAMP (18- 22 NOVEMBER 2011)

By Lex Hes

Temperature on arrival at the camp in the depths of the Timbavati was 38 degrees Celcius with high humidity, but this didn’t dampen the spirits of the 6 participants on this year’s photo workshop.

After settling in we served some tea and got straight down to business finding out more about each other’s photographic interests and discussing things such as white balance settings, ISO settings, image quality, over and under-exposure and the various other buttons and dials on the amazing technological wonder that is a digital camera.

With that completed we loaded up the game drive vehicle, two people for each row of seats and lots of camera gear.  As we set off, a message came over the radio that a young male leopard had been seen in the Shlaralumi River a few kilometers away.  We drove slowly in that direction, stopping regularly for photographic opportunities and when we got there found the young leopard resting on a dam wall.  We waited and after a while he got up and slowly began to move through the bush, providing us with wonderful sightings.  In particular, at one point, we were able to position the vehicle in such a way that the photographers were all close to eye-level with the leopard, which resulted in some great shots which showed the huge impact that is created by getting to eye-level with an animal.

Dinner around the camp-fire that night was extremely hot and humid and during the night a little bit of rain fell which cooled things down a bit.  Next morning, under an overcast sky, we left camp at 5-15 and a few minutes later Cecile spotted a large male African wild cat crouched in the grass.  He slunk off to a nearby bush and settled down in front of the bush in clear view and proceeded to groom himself. 

What followed was about 30 minutes of the best viewing that I have ever had of an African wild cat as he groomed himself, sat and looked around, stalked something and groomed himself again.  He eventually casually moved off towards the south.  The overcast conditions provided us with beautiful soft lighting and we all got great shots.

The soft lighting also helped with some good viewing of a group of spotted hyaena at their den.

Later that morning we saw an adult female leopard hunting through the woodland.  We were lucky enough to spend more than an hour with her as she tried to hunt impala until, as it got hot; she decided to rest in the branches of a tree.

After brunch we had an informal discussion about exposure followed by a rest period and time to download the results of the morning’s photography.  During afternoon tea we had a look at the results and discussed ways to improve our photos.

The afternoon game drive yielded a very relaxed breeding herd of elephants in the very late afternoon after the sun had gone down.  The low light was challenging for us all, but gave us the opportunity to experiment with high ISO settings and also with slow shutter speeds to create blurring effects.

On the morning of the 20^th of November we got some good viewing of a pair of white rhinos which we followed for a while as they grazed peacefully.  At one point both rhinos stopped to defaecate and within minutes dung beetles began to arrive.  We waited for the rhinos to move away and then spent the next one-and-a-half hours with our lenses sticking into the dung heap trying to get photographs of the dung beetles doing their thing!  We watched them fly in, dig, create their balls, roll them away and then bury them.  This kind of photography is a completely different challenge and the results illustrated the importance of good depth-of-field in close-up photography.

In the afternoon we had some sightings of buffalo and also spent a successful late afternoon with the hyaenas at the den. 

The last full day of the workshop yielded an excellent sighting of a leopard resting in classical pose on the branch of an apple-leaf tree giving the photographers an opportunity to try many different angles and interpretations of the same subject as well as a great evening with a group of hyaenas at a waterhole, drinking, resting and hiding the leg of a buffalo in the water.  Before going back to camp we followed up on a pride of lions hunting through the woodland in the dark.

During the night the rain began to fall and continued to fall through the night and into the following morning.  We still went out and tried to get some shots of the rhinos in the rain, but the cold wet weather eventually sent us back to camp for a warm breakfast and departure.

For more information on the photography courses contact enquiries@ecotraining.co.za or visit our website at www.ecotraining.co.za